Saturday, January 19, 2019

Team Titans #14

Team Titans is an anagram for Meat Taints.

This issue begins with a fart joke and while I'd like to criticize writer Jeffrey Jensen for that, it would probably come off as hypocritical. Have you seen some of the immature shit I write? Just today, somebody on Twitter wrote, "A virus has spread around the planet. You are locked in at home. You must survive for 30 days. The last thing you ate is what you will eat until the virus passes. What are you eating for 30 days?" and I answered, "My own semen." At least, like everybody else on the planet, I didn't answer it seriously. As if the guy asking the question just wants to see an endless scroll of "Pizza!" and "Beer!" and "Chocolate!" Maybe not all people are so quick to lie like I am. I mean, the last thing I ate was not my own semen. If that virus actually did hit, it would 30 days of eating my girlfriend's asshole.

On the plus side, I didn't try to intimidate an elderly Native American Vietnam vet with my stupid friends who, judging by the video I'm referencing, are just a bunch of apes in Catholic school sweatshirts. I don't think I was ever friends with somebody who was a racist asshole. But I was friends with this one guy who was just a normal kind of asshole. And sometimes he would do something that you would expect an asshole to do. And in those times, I never backed him up. He once got his ass beat at a park for being a prick and I just stood by and shrugged. Maybe I even put on a lousy Maine accent and said, "You reap what you sow," as I watched him take his fucking medicine.

For those reading this who know me from high school, yes, I'm talking about Larry.

But now I'm a responsible adult who has decided instead of needing to make ethical and judgment calls based on your friends' actions, I would rather forego having friends. Comic books never look at me with a deep hurt in their soul because they feel betrayed by my friendship. They just sit there stupidly as I call them the worst names I can think of and express my extreme disappointment in them. So in a way, comic books are exactly like my friend Doom Bunny!

After the fart joke, the Team Titans enter a mall. I'm going to scan the first two panels to open them up for discussion. The main topic of the discussion is, "What the fuck? Did I just have a stroke? How dumb am I that I don't understand what just happened here? Please let me die."

Maybe Mirage developed echolalia due to her recent trauma? But that still doesn't explain why Battalion says distracted in the way he does.

Hopefully somebody else understands what just happened in these two panels because I've spent way too much time on it already. You might think I've only spent the amount of time it took to read it, scan the pictures, and type the previous words. But I first read this comic book in 1993. So now you know why I never amounted to anything.

Conveniently, the time criminals have decided to rob the mall. Time Commander's hourglass has wound up with some clock repair person who works in the mall and I guess super-villains can't just do a normal errand without robbing somebody. Not that they successfully rob anyone. At least I don't think they do. I'm confused by a bit more than the previous scans.

Chronos begins the comic book with just one arm even though I'm fairly certain he had two arms last issue. But then when he's battling Kilowatt, there's a "blink" and suddenly he has his arm back and he's saying, "Huh? Where the hell am I?" Maybe it will be explained next issue because the clock repair woman seems to have some kind of link to time travel. But even if she somehow manipulated time to give Chronos back his arm, where was it in the first place? I mean aside from on his body on the cover.

After the Team Titans destroy half the mall without even needing to (because apprehending these jerks was simple enough without Kilowatt destroying the roof and Terra destroying the foundation), Terra suddenly becomes a philosopher and psychologist. She realizes these criminals deal with time because they're obsessed with their own mortality. She then spends a page or two explaining why this is but all I read was "I'm Jeffrey Jensen and I have ideas, man! IDEAS!" You know, what everybody translates my reviews into as they read them. But just like every young person who thinks just because they have a hot take on something that they're great at deconstructing any text that crosses their path, Terra is just fucking wrong with her assumptions. I know this because I just read the Who's Who entry on Chronos and it explains why he's obsessed with time. It's because he saw how terrible he was at plotting crimes but was then inspired by the clockwork efficiency of the prison system! So he decided to learn how to make clocks. Although mostly he just learned how to make bombs that looked like clocks and guns that looked like clocks and deadly projectiles that looked like clock. He's basically Batman if Batman had had a neighbor who wanted to see time fly.

Team Titans #14 Rating: Terrible. Practically incomprehensible. Sure, overall I understood the story. Inept villains fail to rob mall while heroic team of teenagers destroy mall while stopping them. There's also a costume parade taking place in the mall but that never becomes a plot point like you would have expected it to. But following the story from panel to panel was too hard a chore for this Grandmaster Comic Book Reader. At least this issue has a letters page so I can read the terrible takes on why this comic book is great. That always makes me feel smarter than the five people who wrote in.